Q: When you started your career as a teenager in Kingston in 1962, were you thinking you’d have a long-term career or did you just expect it would last a few years?

Cliff: I was just thinking something that would last a few years.

Q: By the end of the 1960s, you were evolving into a politically and socially conscious artist with such songs as "Vietnam," which Bob Dylan singled out for praise. Where did your sense of social consciousness come from? Your parents, or someone or something else?

Cliff: My father was an avid reader and many people would go to him for advice, social and political advice, and I’d listen to him giving them advice. So I kind of grew up with a social conscience and political awareness and it became a part of me as I became a more established artist.

Q: Is there a song of yours that you thought represented an early breakthrough, in terms of injecting social consciousness into your music?

Cliff: On the same album that "Vietnam" was on (1969's "Jimmy Cliff") was the song that became an international hit for me, "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," which was an expression of how I would like to see the world, so it was reflecting my global aspirations.

Q: Your starring role in the classic 1972 movie "The Harder They Come" helped introduce you, reggae music and Jamaican culture and life to an even broader global audience. How autobiographical was the character your portrayed in the movie?

Cliff: What I was doing then was just expressing my sensitivity, my feelings, about what was happening around me then, with the hope I was echoing the hopes of the people. I was very encouraged to see the feelings I had then were getting noticed, not just in the moment, but for the long term. As a result I'm still doing it on my latest album now.

Q: Your new album, "Rebirth," was produced by Tim Armstrong of Rancid. It has a pronounced, old-school reggae sound and approach.

Cliff: It gave me an opportunity to do an album like that, which I wanted to do, to complete a chapter in my carer that I had not completed. I wasn't intending to go (back) to the roots of what I'm doing now. It was only after I heard that initial track I did with Tim, and said: "Wow, that is the way to go." I heard the sound of it, the feel of it, the rhythm of it, and it was like what we used to do back then. I didn’t know this sound could still be captured today.

Q: What chapter are you referring to that you wanted to complete?

Cliff: When I did the (“Jimmy Cliff”) album with “Vietnam” on it, I didn’t continue in that vein, so I went to Muscle Shoals (Alabama) and made (the 1971 album) “Another Cycle” (at the Stax Records studio). But I always felt that (older) style of reggae -- that sound, that feeling (from “The Harder They Come”) -- was something I really wanted to complete. People were saying: ‘Wow, why didn’t you continue in that same vein?' So when the opportunity came (last year with Armstrong), I did it